By a vote of 267 to 50, the French Senate on Wednesday passed a text that enshrines “the freedom to have an abortion” in the constitution of the Fifth Republic. As in the French National Assembly, conservatives, including the three senators from Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, voted overwhelmingly in favor of the change.
The Senate also struck down an amendment that would have given doctors the right to refuse to perform abortions—again, with the support of many conservatives.
French President Emmanuel Macron promoted the constitutional change following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court ruling that had made abortion legal throughout the U.S. in 1973.
The legislation now only has to be approved by a joint sitting of the Senate and the French National Assembly. If the text is approved, as is expected, France will be the first country in the world to explicitly guarantee legalized abortion in its constitution.
The prospect has already emboldened French Gender Equality and Diversity Minister Aurore Bergé to express hopes that other EU member states will follow France’s lead.
“We are at an important moment in France,” Bergé told her EU counterparts on the sidelines of an informal meeting of gender equality ministers earlier this week, adding that she hoped “this will inspire all EU member states to guarantee this fundamental freedom, this fundamental right of women.”
Abortion laws vary significantly from country to country. In Malta and Poland, abortion is only allowed in cases of danger to the mother or the child, while in Hungary, Ireland, and Denmark, abortion is easily accessible up to 12 weeks. Sweden allows abortion up to 18 weeks.
It was also under the recent French presidency of the EU that the last major push to enshrine abortion as a right in the EU took place.
